Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Cornelius Gurlitt, the infamous son of a Nazi art dealer, died on Tuesday at the age of 81. Gurlitt shocked the world when German police found 1,280 works from venerated artists like Picasso, Chagall and Matisse, in his Munich apartment, many of which were believed to be stolen Holocaust-era Nazi loot. The German government had been holding the works, researching their provenance
in an attempt to return them to their rightful owners but Gurlitt been
fighting to have these works returned to his possession. Unless proven
otherwise, the works remain Gurlitt’s property. With very little
progress made in discovering the provenance of these works, legal
pressures had been building to return the works to Gurlitt.